Most lucrative Hearthstone win marred by controversy; “Rdu is not cheating,” says Amaz

Radu ‘Rdu’ Dima last night became DreamHack’s Summer Hearthstone Champion. The Romanian had cracked portrait after portrait of top players – Darkwonyx, Ek0p, Reynad and finally Amaz – to win the biggest cheque in professional Hearthstone yet.

But his win was overshadowed by controversy, after Twitch viewers noticed a Battle.net message during his last few games that gave away the contents of Amaz’s hand. As community opinion divided over whether or not the hint was solicited, both tournament organisers and Rdu’s opponent emerged in support of the 17-year-old.

During Rdu’s second game against Amaz, he began to receive a lot of direct messages from his Hearthstone friends list. Visible on-stream as speech bubbles, the majority of the messages were unambiguous declarations of support. But one ‘friend’ sent a message revealing that the single remaining card in Amaz’s hand was Hunter’s Mark.

Rdu was visibly upset by the apparently unsolicited help, streamers report, and called over an admin as soon as the game was finished. Tournament organisers called for a 20 minute break, during which Rdu and Amaz’s friends lists were deleted. Play then resumed, and Rdu went on to win the finals 3-0.

DreamHack admins and experts reviewed the offending footage, and decided that the game need not be replayed. The extra information came too late to change the outcome of a match Rdu was already on the verge of winning, they reasoned.

As Hearthstone Redditors trawled Rdu’s footage for signs of foul play, Amaz expressed support for his $10,000-richer opponent in a video recorded in his hotel room after the finals.